March 6, 2014

Legal future?

As one of our colleagues mentioned: it is not clear why the innovation analogy to law and the modern legal profession is apt. What underlies the claim, he asks, that law firms are too skittish or unimaginative to embrace technological innovation in their business models? And, indeed, what is the evidence that such innovation has not in fact been embraced in key parts of the practice (e.g., the use of predictive analytics in discovery)?

All of which is to say that the debate about the dynamics of professional change is not one between the “futurists” and the “luddites,” but is actually much more nuanced and complex (and interesting!).